Category:Decennalia base (Rome)

English: The emperor Diocletian, at the end of the third century AD, decided that the empire was too big to be ruled by one man. He divided it into two halves, each with a main ruler or Augustus and a sort of vice-president and intended successor called a Caesar. This fragile system was commemorated in 303 AD in an honorary column for Constantius I and Maximianus, which has disappeared, and this base, the "decennalia base", which survives. An inscription reads "Happily ten years". The system collapsed, however, after Diocletian left the scene.